Literary Terms & Rhetorical Devices

Literary Terms & Rhetorical Devices Sophomore English You Got a Friend in Me Unit Of Mice and Men

Plot Diagram • an organizational tool focusing on a pyramid or triangular shape • used to map the events in a story • allows readers and writers to visualize the key features of stories. • The basic triangle-shaped plot structure, representing the beginning, middle, and end of a story, was described by Aristotle. • Gustav Freytag modified Aristotle's system by adding a rising action and a falling action to the structure.

Exposition • Basic Situation • The start of the story • The situation before the action begins

Rising Action • Series of conflicts and crises in the story that lead to the climax

Climax • Turning point • Most intense moment • Mentally • In action

Falling Action • All of the action which follows the climax

Denouement • Resolution • The conclusion • Tying together of all the threads

Character • aperson or animal in a narrative work of art • novel • play • film • guides readers through stories, helping them to understand plots and ponder themes

Foils • a character who contrasts with another character (usually the protagonist) in order to highlight particular qualities of the other character

Characterization • the process by which the writer reveals the personality of a character • May be revealed • Directly • Indirectly

Direct Characterization • tells the audience what the personality of the character is. • “The patient boy and quietgirl were both well-manneredand did not disobey their mother.”

Indirect Characterization • shows things that reveal the personality of a character • STEAL -- Jim was very unlike any other businessman. He made sure that all his clients got what they had paid for.

Allegory • characters or events in a story, poem, or picture represent or symbolize ideas and concepts • a message is communicated by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation

Parable • a brief, succinct story, in prose or verse, that illustrates a moral or religious lesson. • IS an allegory, but not all allegories are parables.

Proverb • a simple and concrete saying popularly known and repeated • which expresses a truth, based on common sense or the practical experience of humanity • often metaphorical • a simple, memorable way of expressing common wisdom

Image • a word or phrase in a literary text that appeals directly to the reader's taste, touch, hearing, sight, or smell. • any vivid or picturesque phrase that evokes a particular sensation in the reader's mind.

Symbol • a word or object that stands for another word or object

Motif • any recurring element that has symbolic significance in a story • abstract idea discussed by a certain work through a repetition of ideas, structures or meaningful elements

Theme • author’s message • the general underlying truths behind the story • Moral • Teaching • View about life

Foreshadowing • an author hints certain plot developments that perhaps will come to be later in the story • can be subtle, like storm clouds on the horizon suggesting that danger is coming, or more direct, such as Romeo and Juliet talking about wanting to die rather than live without each other

Flashback • an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point • a memory

Setting • includes the historical moment in time and geographic location in which a story takes place, and helps initiate the main backdrop and mood for a story • time and place

Banned Book • one that has been censored by an authority—a government, a library, or a school system. • has been banned is actually removed from a library or school system.

Novella • a written, fictional, prose narrative normally longer than a short story but shorter than a novel

Poetry • an imaginative awareness of experience expressed through meaning, sound, and rhythmic language choices so as to evoke an emotional response

Free Verse • an open form of poetry that does not use consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any other musical pattern

Blank Verse • Type of poetry • any verse comprised of unrhymed lines all in the same meter • unrhymed iambic pentameter

Iambic Pentameter • a commonly used metrical line in traditional verse and verse drama • Shakespeare’s favorite • rhythm of pairing ten syllables for each line into five pairs • one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed

Apostrophe • a figure of speech in which someone absent or dead or something nonhuman is addressed as if it were alive and present and was able to reply • Busy old fool, unruly sun, Why dost thou thus, Through windows, and through curtains call on us? --John Donne

Vernacular • The standard native language of a country or locality • The everyday language spoken by a people as distinguished from the literary language

Literary Terms & Rhetorical Devices